Buy a cheap notebook–no fancy journals, please. That will intimidate you too much. You’ll think about how your grandchildren might read the entries, and try to make them too perfect.

Write three pages, long-hand, strictly stream of consciousness stuff. No editing. Cross-outs okay. At first, you’ll bitch a lot, and that’s okay, too. It’s like priming a pump. First, the sludge, then the good stuff.